-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of Thomas Dalton
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 3:46 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Why are URLs numbered?
On 05/09/07, Mark Ryan <ultrablue(a)gmail.com> wrote:
(snip)
Either way, the referencing system could use some more functionality like
this.
I don't see any reason to assign it number 2. Just
leave it as number
one, and put [1, p 18] in the text, linking to footnote 1.
In that example, not especially. But remember footnotes often contain
comments, quotes used to back facts in the article, and other footnote-style
information, here's a practical example of where you'd want it (all [X] are
<SUP>):
Tony Blair was considered one of Britain's "fresh starts" when first
elected
Prime Minister.[1] However, by the end of his term, the consensus of
political historians was that he had lost much credibility,[2] and was
becoming perceived as an electoral liability.[3] His stance over Iraq and
failure to delivery on many promises had lost him much goodwill over his ten
year term.[4] [5]
Footnotes and cites:
[1] John Historian, ''The Blair years: A historical analysis'', pub.
Harvard
Press 2007, p.45: "Blair represented a fresh start to Britain after the John
Major years...".
[2] CITE WEB "10 years of Blair - an posthumous assessment", ''The
Independent'' 9 August 2007, p.4 - 8: "Blair's credibility steadily
plummeted during 2003 to 2005"
[3] Source, see [note 1], p.57.
[4] See [note 1] - Examples of failures noted by Historian include: p.403
"Failure to successfully reform the national health service", p.511 "the
ID
card scandal", and p. 745 "Failure to resolve ongoing concerns over
Europe".
[5] Per [note 2]: "A large part of the public never really forgave him for
what was widely seen as misleading Parliament over Iraq..."
The above is "quick and dirty" and not entirely best MOS style, but shows
the kind of use I see even this simple <reflink name="something" />
facility
being put to. In the above usage, both sources would have needed to be fully
cited multiple times, to list page numbers or wording referenced, and this
is both unwieldy for editors and readers alike.
FT2.